By MICK ROBERTS © THE rivalry between Melbourne and Sydney is legendary – a competitiveness between Australia’s two largest cities that can be found from the sporting fields to the bar rooms of pubs. During the 1950s Melbourne’s Young and Jackson… Read More ›
THE Blues Point Hotel, at McMahon Point, North Sydney, has undergone a few transformations since it was established in 1864. The current pub was built in 1938, however the site at the southern corner of Blues Point Road and French… Read More ›
THE Long Bar of the Australia Hotel, known all over the world, is having its character changed. Half its length has closed down and will be converted into a series of short island bars, with a cocktail bar at the… Read More ›
WHO would have thought? The wharfies who frequented the Harbour View Hotel in the shadow of the Sydney Harbour Bridge at Millers Point during the early 1950s insisted on having fresh flowers in the bar every day – and, as… Read More ›
SYDNEY’S oldest wharf laborer, who works at 91, attributes his long life and good health to “plenty work and plenty beer.” He is John ‘Scotty’ Steele, Dargnan-street, Glebe, who was born nine miles from Glasgow in 1855. He presents himself… Read More ›
THE Daily Telegraph visited a number of Sydney pubs, including Surry Hills’ iconic Hollywood Hotel, in 1954, reporting on how women were finally infiltrating the harbour city’s bars. Besides the Hollywood, the newspaper called into the Newcastle Hotel in George… Read More ›
THE bars of Jim Buckley’s Newcastle Hotel, in Sydney’s CBD, were adorned with artwork. Most of the available wall space inside the pub, which was home to Sydney’s more creative drinkers, was hung with artwork. Buckley had the the pub,… Read More ›
By MICK ROBERTS © A drifter, William Price did most odd jobs around the pubs where he worked in return for boarding and lodgings. He tapped beer barrels, collected glasses, cleaned toilets, and emptied ashtrays. His job was often labelled as… Read More ›
Marie Joan Keighery finally got fed-up of drinkers ‘hogging’ the bar of her Sydney pub during the war years when beer was short and pubs often sold-out before the end of the day. The host of the Lismore Hotel in… Read More ›
THERE’S a modern looking pub trading at McMahon’s Point, North Sydney that gives no indication of its interesting connection with Colonial Sydney. John Blue was granted a “new license” for a two-storey sandstone inn on March 7 1854. He named… Read More ›